1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to computer systems. More specifically, the invention relates to methods and procedures for allowing a computer to work with input data that is in a format nominally incompatible with the computer.
2. Discussion of the Prior Art
Today, computer systems, e.g., PC or Apple, are associated with many different processor types, e.g., Intel, Motorola, RISC, and include various operating system platforms, e.g., Windows, UNIX, OS/2 etc. Each of these computer system devices generally include a floppy disk drive or CD-ROM drive enabling a disk to be inserted into the system for reading data therefrom or data thereto. Typical problems that exist today largely deal with compatibility, where disks having programs readable and/or executable on one computing system platform, e.g., an Apple computer, may not be read or executed on another computing system platform. For example, if a student receives a game from one of his friends on a floppy disk who has a different computer system than his friends, that student would not be able to play the game because the software would not be compatible with his computer.
Some computer systems provide for the simulation of a disk driver of other, different operational systems. This requires the installation of software that enables a computer controlled with one operational system to read a floppy disk or CD-ROM that was formatted in another operational system. This solution is not very convenient since there are many other different operational systems and it takes a lot of memory to install many drivers for all existing operational systems into one computer. Also operational systems are often upgraded. Therefore, simulation of other operational systems on a PC may quickly become obsolete.
Another problem with simulators of other operational system drivers is that they allow only a limited number of operations, such as reading and writing files. They usually do not allow the execution of complex applications intended to be run on a different operational system.
Efforts have been made to create an operational system that is compatible with other operational systems (for example, Apple, UNIX, and Intel). So far, however, these efforts have not been completely successful due to the complexity of different operational systems. Furthermore, the platform-independent software approach, e.g., Java, enables the execution of applications that are written in Java to run on different operational systems, but still does not allow the reading of data from incompatible floppy/CD-ROM disks.